The little girl in frilly dresses and cowboy boots. The fretful baby she’d rocked late at night. The defiant teenager, the child who’d crawled into bed with her seeking comfort from a bad dream.
The woman in the bed with the bruised face, the dull and graying hair, the hard lines dug in around her mouth and eyes bore little resemblance to those precious images.
Still, Cora thought, she recognized her daughter.
Her heart twisted in her chest, a rag wrung hard, and her legs went weak under her.
Then Maureen tightened her grip on her hand. “I’m right here, Ma. I’ll be right here, right outside.”
Cora straightened her backbone, walked toward the bed.
The woman in the bed cringed back. Her eyes, green as her father’s had been, darted around the room with terror chasing behind them.
Some nightmares couldn’t be soothed away with cuddles.
“It’s all right now, Alice. Nobody’s going to hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
“Where’s the man? Where’s the…”
“Bob Tate? He’s right outside. He called me to tell me you were here. I’m so happy to see you again, Alice. My Alice.”
“Esther.” Alice hunched in on herself. “I don’t want any more shots. Sir will be very angry. I can’t stay here.”
“I had a teacher named Esther,” Cora made up on the spot. “Esther Tanner. She was so nice. But I named you Alice, for your daddy’s ma. Alice Ann Bodine. My frisky Alley Cat.”
Was it her own blind hope, her own desperate need, or did she see something flicker in those frightened eyes. Carefully, so carefully her bones hurt, she eased onto the side of the bed.
“I used to call you that when you were just a baby, fighting sleep. Oh, you’d fight sleep like it was your fiercest enemy. My Alice never wanted to miss a minute of life.”
“No. Alice was a whore and a trollop. God punished her for wickedness.”
Her heart twisted again, this time with that churning rage, but Cora dammed it up. For later.
“Alice is, and was, and always will be high-spirited, stubborn, but never wicked. Oh, you could drive me to distraction and back again, my Alley Cat, but couldn’t you make me laugh, too? And make me proud. Like that time you stood up for little Emma Winthrop when the other girls were making fun of her for having a stutter. You pushed a couple of them right on their asses, got in trouble for it. And made me proud.”
Alice shook her head, and Cora took a chance.
Gently, so gently, she laid her hands on Alice’s cheeks. “I love you, Alice. Your ma always loves you.”
When Alice shook her head again, Cora only smiled, lowered her hands to her lap. “You know who else is here, whenever you want to see them? Reenie and Grammy. We’re all so happy you’re home.”
Eyes darting again, Alice rubbed her lips together. “Sir provides. I have to go back. I have a house Sir built for me. I keep it clean. I have to clean the house.”
“I’d just love to see your house.” Cora kept her smile easy and thought dark, bitter, vengeful thoughts. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Now the darting eyes flew back to Cora’s. They held such fear, such confusion. “I got lost. I was wicked, and fell into temptation.”
“We’re not going to worry about that. Not a bit. You look tired now, so I’m going to let you rest. I’m just going to leave something with you, one of my favorite things.”
Rising, Cora reached in her pocket. She’d taken the wallet snapshot out of her purse on the drive in. Gently again, she took Alice’s hand, pressed the photo into it.
In it, Cora stood flanked by her two teenage daughters, their cheeks pressed to hers as they smiled for the camera.
“Your grandpa took that on Christmas morning when you were sixteen. You hold on to that. If you get afraid, you look at that. Now you rest, my Alice. I love you.”
She got as far as the door and Maureen before the tears started.
“It’s all right, Ma. You did everything right.”
“She looks so sick and scared. Her hair, oh, Reenie, her pretty hair.”
“We’re going to take care of her now. We’re all going to take care of her. Come on now. Come on and sit back down. Chase,” Maureen said as soon as they reached the waiting area. “Go get your nana some tea, and for Grammy, too. Sit down, Ma.”
Miss Fancy wrapped her arms around Cora, rocked, soothed.
“Dr. Grove,” Maureen said. “I’d like to speak with you a moment.”
She walked out, scanned the area for something approaching a private spot.
“First,” she began, “you said someone would be evaluating her mental and emotional state. I’m assuming you mean a psychiatrist.”
“That’s correct.”
“I’ll need the name and the qualifications of that doctor. Understand me,” she continued before he could speak. “My mother is, as advertised, a strong woman. But she needs an advocate, and my sister certainly does. That will be me. I need to know everything there is to know about her condition, every part of her condition, and her treatments.”
She drew out her phone. “I’m going to record this, if you don’t mind, so there’s no chance I’ll misunderstand or mix something up later. Before I do that I want to thank you for the care you’ve given my sister so far, and the compassion you showed my mother.”
“I’ll be as thorough as I can. I think it would benefit my patient if you and I and Dr. Minnow had a conversation before she evaluates Alice.”
“Is that Celia Minnow?”
“Yes. Do you know her?”
“I do, so we can skip going into her qualifications. I can meet with both of you whenever you can set it up. Now.” She turned on her phone recorder. “Let’s start with Alice’s physical condition.”
*
Bodine took a page out of her mother’s book. She waited until Tate stepped out to make a call, slipped out behind him.
“I have questions.”
“I understand that, Bodine, but—”
She simply took his arm, steered him past the nurses’ station. “You said she’d been raped—before she was brought here. You did a rape kit?”
“That’s right.”
“Is there DNA, his DNA? I’ve watched my share of CSI shows.”
“And you should know it doesn’t work just as it does on TV. It’s going to take time to get results from the kit. And if there’s DNA, we’ll need a suspect to match it up against.”
“She could identify this man.”
In a gesture as weary as he looked, Tate scrubbed at the back of his neck. “She can’t identify herself right now.”
“I understand that. And I understand most of my family is focusing on Alice, how she is more than how she got there. So I’m going to start with how she got there. Where was she, exactly? Who found her?”
“A couple driving home from a night out found her on the side of Route 12. We can’t say where she’d come from, how far she’d walked before she just collapsed there. She was wearing a housedress, house slippers. She didn’t have any identification. She didn’t have a damn thing.”